Photographer Broc Ellinger Opens the BE Gallery in Downtown Santa Barbara

At around 2 a.m., Broc Ellinger was walking around New York City’s Penn Station with his camera. As he strolled along the dark platforms, he noticed he was the only person around. The stillness broke when the conductor of the train next to him peered his head out of the window, checking for any last-minute passengers. Ellinger took advantage of the unexpected moment. Within a few seconds, he snapped the photo. “I hope you got my good side,” he remembers the conductor saying. Then, the train left the station and disappeared into the darkness.

Born and raised in Ventura, Ellinger, who started his professional photography career at 21 years old, has always been drawn to human connection. Whether it’s a fatigued conductor on an early morning train, resilient firefighters battling a fire, or everyday people, Ellinger seeks to tell each story. “This isn’t just about photography,” he said as we walked around his new gallery space on State Street. “This is about the human experience.” 

Ellinger’s natural curiosity about his surroundings has grown into a fascination he translates through photography. Now 32, he recently opened The BE Gallery in downtown Santa Barbara.

The name is a nod to his initials but also an important message he lives by. “The most challenging thing in life is to just be,” he said. The gallery is a chance for him to sell his work and share parts of his life story. At his November 18 opening, Ellinger felt the support of the Santa Barbara community. Despite the pouring rain, the space hosted a myriad of supportive individuals gladly celebrating his life’s work, with people from Santa Barbara, Ventura, and even Los Angeles there to support him.

For Ellinger, this gallery represents a new chapter in his life. “I have to pinch myself every day when I come in here, because I’m extremely lucky,” he said. Like the purpose behind every photograph that lines the bright white walls, The BE Gallery tells a unique story. Visitors are met with a timeline of Ellinger’s work complemented by plaques explaining how his life has influenced his photography. “I just wanted a place where people feel connected,” he said. “I want someone to walk in here and be like, ‘I want to go buy a camera.’” At the gallery’s entrance is a dedication plaque alongside an image of his 21-year-old-self looking through a camera’s viewfinder. “This gallery is dedicated to my grandmother, family, friends, and the strongest community in the world who have helped me get here,” he wrote.

Luck is a recurring theme throughout our conversation. Ellinger considers himself lucky not only for having his gallery space in Santa Barbara but also for his successful photography career. “I can’t just take all the credit,” he said, as we sat on a black leather couch facing one of the gallery walls. “Yes, I’ve done all the work, but there’s a community that has been cheering me on.”

Ellinger made the decision to pursue photography more than 10 years ago and was met with mixed reactions. Yet the criticism didn’t faze him; he knew it was what he wanted to do. As a result, he challenged himself. Even now, when I ask him about the challenges of opening a storefront, he responds, “I’m lucky to have a challenge.”

In 2012, he took a unique approach to his work. At thousands of feet up, he snapped images from airplanes before the popular era of drone photography. He captured the landscapes of Santa Barbara, Ventura, Santa Paula, and Malibu and slowly started to make his work known. On display in the gallery, a 42″x60″ black-and-white depiction of the Topatopa mountains, a mountain range in Ventura County, offers a glimpse into his aviation era.

There is only so much space on the gallery walls for Ellinger to display his decade-long career. Along the way, he’s documented an array of diverse stories he hopes to share. He captures elements of the human experience, such as love, pain, and ego. But telling those stories requires trust. “My life has been a balancing act of trust — trusting others and myself,” he says on the plaque in his gallery titled “HUMANS.” When photographing the intimacies of people’s lives, Ellinger often snaps the photograph without asking, so he can capture the moment. “Sometimes, I ask. Sometimes, I take. I use the word ‘take’ because I am extracting more than a photograph from them. I am taking away their privacy and might be violating their trust.” The resulting candid photographs are a raw glimpse into the human experience.

Ellinger photographs with film and digitally. However, he uses other methods to manipulate the photograph’s appearance. Along one wall of his gallery are two black-and-white film prints where he used a technique to create an effect similar to pointillism — shooting film with a high ISO, creating a grain over the image giving it a dotted look. In one image, a person is seen laughing as they cool off around a ground spray in Washington, D.C. Ellinger wanted to enhance the hot summer day, so he used the pointillism technique to highlight the heat.

He said that stepping outside his community and documenting unfamiliar places and people’s lives has enriched his experience. Since his career took off, Ellinger has traveled to places such as Japan, Italy, and Spain. He hopes to continue his world travels and seek the untold stories of strangers to document them and learn from them.

Ellinger said his curiosity for life influences his work — a curiosity imposed onto his gallery visitors. In 2016, he took a photo of a man named Packy on the Ventura Pier. To this day, he said that it continues to be the image that many people recognize him for. Packy is the largest print in his gallery, and Ellinger said this was intentional — the image boosted his career and is also one of his favorites. I don’t know what it is about the image, but I can’t look away. Perhaps it’s the man’s piercing blue eyes or the texture of his beard, but the more I look at it, I realize why so many people are drawn to the image. Photography tells a story but doesn’t reveal the whole story — it keeps you asking questions. Gazing at the photo of Packy, I can’t help but wonder: What’s his story?The BE Gallery is at 931 State Street, Santa Barbara. For more information, see thebegallery.com/about.